Exploratory data analysis of Asia-Pacific political incident and conflict trends

Author

Risk Anticipation Hub

Published

August 30, 2024

2. Protests

The most common form of political conflict is to protest. Protests are a non-violent form of political conflict which manifest when all legal and administrative avenues have been exhausted. Widespread protests indicate a “hole” in governance, given that such protests would only be possible if a significant proportion of the population not only agreed with them but also felt that the issue had gone unaddressed long enough or is egregious to manifest their outrage in public.


2.1 Common protest topics

Figure 6 below shows the (log of) odds that a word will appear in post-COVID event descriptions for protests events in that country. For example, the word with the highest odds of appearing in protest events in India is BJP.

This document does not pretend to speak for the people, however, the charts below do provide a very useful overview of what people in each country are most concerned with. To continue with India, the top end of its chart is dominated by minority rights and rural economic issues, with the incumbent party firmly at the top, given that these protests stemmed from their policies. Instead of focusing of the individual odds of each word, it is better to take the list of words as a whole, in aggregate.

Place names have been largely filtered out, countries below left with many place names in their protest descriptions tend to have experienced widespread protests over singular topics. An example of this is Thailand, where protests seem to revolve around the singular issue of state power. Almost every other word is a place name where protests concerning state power took place. Myanmar’s protest descriptors are similar as well, given that they too were preoccupied with their own coup. This is also the same for South Korea, though that may also be due to over-centralisation in Seoul.


Figure 6


The Philippines has less protests per capita than Afghanistan. Protesters there are not in an enviable position if they believe protesting is riskier than it is in Afghanistan.

South Korea, Hong Kong, the Maldives and Nepal all experienced significant protest events. New Zealand is currently experiencing a political crisis, but people there might just be more politically active in general, given that in addition to Maori rights, they seem to be fairly responsive to geopolitical events.

The people of Iran, in spite of their government being party to numerous contentious geopolitical conflicts, seem to be most concerned about economic issues as well as basic human rights. And in Sri Lanka, tensions from the civil war continue to manifest in society.




2.2 Use of force against protesters

This section is concerned with protests where individuals who are peacefully protesting are targeted with violence, including that which results in serious injuries or death. Figure 7 charts the countries where protests are most likely to be met with violence.

More than one-fifth of all protests in the Maldives and Vietnam were met with violence and/or excessive force. Criticisms of the Maldives for restrictions on freedom of expression and peaceful assembly are validated by the data. The next four countries below it (Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Myanmar) either have massive state apparatuses dedicated to suppression of free expression or were or ar at war.


violence ratio pre- and post-covid

Figure 7


The level of suppression is indicative of both the priorities of the state (how committed it is to free expression) as well as the ability of the state to enforce its authority. The New Zealand and Australian government’s responses to protests was swift and forceful, especially during COVID. On the other hand, South Korea and post-COVID Japan both seem to be much more permissive towards protesters. However, this does not mean that the government of Pakistan is more permissive to protesters than that of Australia, just that the authority of the state there is too weak to do.

Likewise, the number of protests met with violence in Bangladesh decreased from about 10% pre-COVID, to just over 5% post-COVID whilst the number of total protests has doubled: given that the quota reform movement and the resulting government response there began before COVID, the Bangladeshi state was likely unable to intervene in any more protests than it already was doing.




3. Country spotlights

3.1 Myanmar

The current conflict is very linear and concerned with the control of the road network. The highway network was constructed to link military garrisons, important natural resources (gems, ores, oil and gas), border crossings and, now, narcotics factories important to funding the war effort. The Tatmadaw have never been in full of Myanmar’s territory and their ability to project power is now deeply compromised and, consequently, so is their economy.

This has given rise to the very linear pattern of violence as both sides contest for control over the road network. For the rebels, they have stated that “all roads lead to Naypyitaw” (the gold diamond in the middle of the country) are have been trying to enclose the military and limit its movements.

Overland trade with China has fallen by 41% and by 87% with Thailand; the border crossing with India remains closed. Rebel groups are now preparing to siege Sittwe and Mandalay, the last major garrison before Naypyitaw.

Figure 8 plots the Myanmar civil war over its road network (dark blue). Conflict events are in red, with the sizes corresponding to the number of fatalities. Gold squares are Tatmadaw regional commands and blue squares are border crossings.

Figure 8

In the northeast, Lashio has fallen, drastically lowering the amount of conflict in the area. And Muse has lost five out of its ten border gates with China. In the southeast Loikaw has fallen (not a major command post, but a city at major arterial intersection in the road network) and so has the crossing with Chiang Mai at Myawaddy.

In the northwest, India has closed the border crossing at Tamu (in line with the Tatmadaw’s wishes, since they no longer control it); and we also see intensification of conflict in Rakhine in preparation for the battle of Sittwe. With the northern garrisons isolated and cut off, rebels hold much of Monywa town itself, isolating the garrison there as the main front encircles and prepares to invade Mandalay.

The military no longer has the ability to push beyond the positions they already hold. If the rebels can defeat the Mandalay garrison, the Tatmadaw will have lost. However, the remaining garrisons are entrenched and manned by hardened troops. With reference to the inset line graph of fatalities over time in Figure 8, although overall fatalities seem to be decreasing, battles seem to be getting bloodier as the conflict gets more concentrated as spikes in fatalities in 2024 matched the highs set in 2022.

However, should the fall of the Tatmadaw seem imminent, all attempts must be made, through all channels, to prevent a free-for-all. With reference to MIMU ethnolinguistic map of Myanmar (Figure 9) below, no [modern] government has exerted territorial control over the entirety of Myanmar.

Figure 9

Areas predominantly settled by ethnic minorities are strongholds of anti-Tatmadaw forces and have been for decades. Forces in these areas are converging on the yellow area in the middle of the country, populated primarily by the Bamar majority.

Given the disparate armed groups present, and the massive proliferation of conflict actors in post-coup Myanmar, and that previous attempts at peace and reconciliation in Myanmar, even under the Aung San Suu Kyi administration, were half-hearted and not well-received.

Figure 10

The rebels and the National Unity Government have sought to isolate military garrisons from each other.

The plots above are of the Myanmar civil war, with events (red) plotted over the road network (blue). Gold squares are Tatamadaw regional commands and the blue squares are border crossings.

Within Myanmar itself, with reference to the maps below, the fighting seems to have come to a very critical juncture. At first glance, the fighting seems to have lessened in 2024, but with reference to the line graph of monthly fatalities, we know that the fighting has instead been concentrated.

The rebels and the National Unity Government have sought to isolate military garrisons from each other; and the Tatmadaw needs to maintain its supply lines to its major command centres (as they protect border crossings, various mineral mines and other resources, such as methamphetamine factories) as well as try to project power into rebel-held territory.




3.1.1 “Deadliest” actors

The plot below details the most lethal actors by country: these are the actors involved in events associated with the highest number of fatalities. The x-axis is the estimate for the number of fatalities from each event each actors is involved in.

Additionally, actors related to or originating from Myanmar are highlighted in red in the plot below. The widespread nature of protests, riots and violent incursions related to Myanmar. Even though armed conflict in Myanmar is largely contained within its borders, a war of this size is destabilising for the region as a whole.

The ILO noted that there were 2.2 million Myanmar migrants in Thailand and Malaysia alone in 2019. It is unclear how much more that number has grown since the start of the civil war.



The Philippine police is more lethal than anti-drug vigilantes and the New People’s Army. Similarly, in China, civilians seem to be involved in more fatalities per event than even the police, or rioters, indicating problems with violence against civilians (as fatalities from an incident where one party were civilians and the other combatants).

South Korea here should be counterpoint to the Philippines, Vietnam and China, especially in terms of the lethality of state actors. In spite of how much Koreans protest, neither their protesters nor their state actors are amongst those who have suffered the most casualties.

Appendices

Fatalities streamgraph

From Figure 11, sorted in order of number of fatalities from political incidents per quarter, it is clear that Afghanistan, Myanmar, Pakistan and Philippines have experienced severe political unrest, ranging from war, terrorism and political killings. Conflict in Afghanistan and Philippines has fallen significantly since its peak, but Myanmar is still in full conflagration and Pakistan is on the upswing:


Figure 11


Protest network graph

It appears that Indonesia, Iran, Nepal and Cambodia each have experienced much cyclical political violence related to elections and mass protest movements. Though in Cambodia, the deaths associated with protests in 2018 might have served as a strong deterrent.

In this section, we explore the concerns of protesters in the Asia-Pacific. Below is a network graph of event descriptions of protests in the Asia-Pacific in the past 10 years. The links (edges) between each of the words indicate the strength of the relationship (transparency) and the number of times this word pair has occurred (thickness). Only the most common word pairs with correlations above 0.2 are included (for legibility).

The main topics identified from the graph include (cross-border issues are in bold):

  • Contentious territories: Myanmar, Palestine, Korea, Manipur, Kashmir, Fukushima

  • Legislation and state overreach: Citizenship amendment, Lese majeste, Oli (Nepal), Arrest, Money laundering

  • Economic concerns and service delivery: Unions, Prices, Arrears, Pensions, Hikes, Load shedding, Farms, Outages

  • Coronavirus

These can be thought of as the prime destabilising factors for the region: in some cases, they have devolved into open conflict. Peace actors should seek the just resolution of issues and ensure that nonviolent options always remain open to people.

Regional tensions, state overreach and bread and butter issues are the issues that people in the Asia-Pacific protested the most about. Though inflation seems to have been arrested, the poverty rate in these countries should be monitored very carefully.


Figure 12

Footnotes

  1. The primary dataset used is the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED). The primary reason for privileging this source over UCDP’s Georeferenced Event Dataset is because ACLED has a wider diversity of sources and records a wider range of conflict events.↩︎

  2. The ACLED codebook contains all the documentation, including coding decisions and explanations of all recorded variables↩︎

  3. The ACLED codebook contains all the documentation, including coding decisions and explanations of all recorded variables↩︎